Adventures in France

Month: September 2014

This summer passed so quickly! Between finishing up my internship, moving, traveling around Europe and visiting the USA, time flew by.

Let’s start by talking about the internship. This past semester, I was very fortunate to intern at GfK Retail and Technology in Paris. It was a great experience that allowed me to grow professionally. As a parting gift, my wonderful team gave me a bunch of movies so that I can expand my embarrassingly small repertoire of French movies. I’m hoping to watch all of them by the end of the semester 🙂

The end of my internship meant that it was time for me to pack up my bags and move back to Reims. Luckily my parents came to visit me the same week I was moving, so I was able to enlist their help. The day of the move, we went to the airport to pick up a rental car. Once we arrived, we had to wait in line for two hours to get our rental car. Of course, only our rental car company had a long line. Other people walked up to car rental desks and left with keys before we moved up another spot in line in line. It was a little ridiculous. Fortunately after we got our rental car, the move went very smoothly. My new apartment is definitely my favorite one so far and I’m definitely excited to be living there this year.

After moving and finishing up my internship, I hit the road with my parents to see more of France, Switzerland, and Italy. Our first stop was the Loire Valley where we spent a few days exploring the lovely châteaux in the region.

Next we dropped off rental car and hopped on a train to the beautify city of Annecy. Canals run through the city and mountains can be seen surrounding the Lake Annecy. During our time in Annecy, we took a boat tour, explored churches, and went on a bike ride by the lake. Unexpectedly, we arrived on the first day of the city’s annual festival and were treated to an acrobatic show and great music.

After Annecy, it was time to say goodbye to France and cross the border into Switzerland, where we spent two days in Geneva. We had an amazing time exploring the city with the Geneva Pass. My favorite activity was taking a cable car up a mountain where we got to see a gorgeous view of the city. The food in Geneva was amazing too! One night we went to a delicious vegetarian restaurant, Qibi, that was close to hotel. After a week of eating that pizza, bread, cheese, and salad–the most common vegetarian options in French restaurants–it was really nice to eat something new.

Travel tip: each country in Europe has a main train company. If you are picking up your ticket in the station, make sure you buy your ticket from the train company of the country you’re leaving from, not the country you’re going to. Unfortunately, We learned this the hard way. I bought our train tickets to Italy from the Italy train company since we were traveling from Switzerland to Italy, I was informed at the train station that we couldn’t get our tickets prints and that it was impossible to pick up our tickets at Swiss train stations. Luckily, we were easily able to get our train tickets reimbursed and bought new tickets (through the Swiss train company) to get to Italy.

We were off to Cinque Terre in Italy to continue our European travels. Cinque Terre is a series of five fishing villages on the coast of Italy that are connected by a train and hiking trails. Excited to relax by the water after a long day of traveling, we arrived in the first village, Monterosso, to find it swarming with people–not exactly what we expected. We were staying at the fifth village, Riomaggiore, which thankfully was less crowded. Relaxing by the water and eating all of the food and gelato we could in Italy was perfect ending for our European adventures. 🙂

We traveled back to Reims for a night so that I could repack. The next morning we were off once again, this time to America. It was so good to be back in the States again! I spent my month in the US catching up with family and friends and drinking all the sweet tea I could. I was able to see some amazing concerts, visit Elon, eat at the Root multiple times, see high school and college friends, and spend time at the beach. It was a great way to end the summer!

Before I knew it, it was time for me to head back to Reims for my last year of college.

School started earlier this week, officially bring my summer to an end. The beginning of school also means that I am officially a senior in college…I can’t believe how fast my time at college has passed. A year from I am going to be doing something other than going to school for the first time in my life–a fact that both excites and terrifies me because I’m not sure what that something will be. But, I have a year full of adventures ahead of me and time to figure out what my next chapter will be. I have a feeling that it’s going to be an awesome senior year.